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The 10 Biggest Small Mistakes Churches Make – Failure to “Guard the Gate”

First installment in this series. It's a little longer than I'd hoped…but hopefully somewhat worthwhile. Great suggestions for future posts in this series. Keep them coming! By the way, sorry for the wind blasts from time to time…it was great to be outside though 🙂

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Dr. Tim Spivey is Lead Planter of New Vintage Church in San Diego, California. He is the author of numerous articles and one book, "Jesus: The Powerful Servant." A sought after speaker for events, Tim also serves as Adjunct Professor of Religion at Pepperdine University. Tim serves as a church consultant, and his writings are featured on ChurchLeaders.com, Church Executive magazine, Faith Village, Sermon Central, and Giving Rocket.

3 thoughts on “The 10 Biggest Small Mistakes Churches Make – Failure to “Guard the Gate””

In his latest book, How the Mighty Fall, Jim Collins makes an interesting observation about successful companies that I think applies to church leadership (not all business wisdom does). He suggests that successful companies don’t hire people and then train or convince them of their corporate philosophy; they hire people that already share their philosophy and support them. If I had known that simple piece of wisdom I would have avoided the disaster that was my last ministry position. I was hired to change the culture at a church, but I should have realized that almost never happens. As Collins says, after I was “chewed up and spit out,” the church returned to its former culture almost immediately. Just a bit of advice to all of those would-be “change agents” still out there.

Every church in America needs to heed this advice. I especially concur with the greatly discredited belief that a person will “grow up into” the task of being a leader. And with your advice about creating a system of “checks and balances” in a group of elders. It sounds very democratic and American, but it’s insane! Many churches today suffer from this kind of deeply flawed thinking.
When I entered my last ministry position I had 12 elders that collectively held 3-4 fundamentally different visions for the church. It never got any better, even when all 12 stepped down and we started over. This flaw is deep in the DNA of C of C. Trying to avoid it usually prompts all sorts of criticism about the elders being elitist (ironic since, in one respect, being spiritual, they should be).

Great thoughts as usual Tim! When some one is thrust into a leadership position in the church dispite certain flaws thinking the leadership position will somehow help the person snap out of it hardly if ever works. In fact, it probably makes it worse.
Thanks again for your thought-provoking posts and videos Tim. God bless. Grace and Peace.